Translational Research: Innovation across Medical, Industrial and Scientific Boundaries

• In Event: Emergent Technologies in Biomedicine and Healthcare: Boundaries, Tensions, and Possibilities - I

Abstract

Translational research, initiated in the 1990s in the United States, is a concept whose aim is to strengthen and fluidify relations between researchers, physicians and industrials through various mechanisms in order to accelerate the processes of health innovation from the laboratory to the patient's bed. Based on the case study of interventional radiology, we propose here a reflection on this concept – which seems to be gaining ground in France since the early 2000s – stemming from biomedical research and its impacts on the trajectories of innovations.
Based on the qualitative (interviews & observations) and quantitative (use of bibliometric databases) results of a study on interventional radiology (IR), we propose here to study the mechanisms influencing translational processes and to identify the obstacles to the diffusion of medical innovation. Three dimensions will be highlighted: 1/ Scientific factors. The visibility and identification of scientific publications should be questioned and, above all, the importance of epidemiological evaluation, made difficult in IR by the profusion of techniques, should be emphasised. 2 / Economic factors. The aim will be to highlight the importance of science-industry collaboration in the development of therapeutic innovations, but also that of financing medical procedures in order to ensure the dissemination of techniques 3 / Socio-cognitive factors. The recognition of the IR may have been hampered by power games between specialties, a lack of identification by institutional actors and a lack of visibility among the general public.

Authors

• Léo Mignot, Université de Bordeaux - Centre Emile Durkheim

• Pascal Ragouet, Université de Bordeaux - Centre Emile Durkheim

• Vincent Grimaud, Université de Bordeaux - Centre Emile Durkheim